Volume 44, Number 14 · September 25, 1997
The Risk of Freedom
By Andrew Delbanco
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
by Roger Shattuck
Harvest Books, 370 pp., $14.95 (paper)
When the successful cloning of a Scottish sheep a few months ago raised the specter that human beings might soon be making genetic copies of themselves, a Senate subcommittee on public health and safety convened to consider the matter. 'Humans are not God,' Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri declared as the hearings began, 'and we should therefore not try to play God.' Banal as it may have been, the Senator's remark registered a moment of cordiality between religious conservatives and secular liberals, who ordinarily do not agree on much. Both sides seemed to think (and a commission headed by the president of Princeton University has since concurred) that there are some things people ought not to do, perhaps even things we ought not to know how to do.[1]
Review, 3905 words
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